D&D General Carrying and dragging stuff

[TheSword]

I feel like moving other creatures has been seriously nerfed in 2024 and I hadn’t noticed it. My party are pretty regularly heaving another PHB onto their shoulder and pulling the out of danger but in the 2024 rules this becomes much harder. I also don’t quite get how folks are talking about dragging people though spike growths etc.

Relevant rules

• Carrying capacity for medium creatures is now Strength x 15 (150 lbs for Str 10)
• You can push, lift or drag something Str x 30 but if it’s more than Str x 15 your move drops to 5ft

So basically if you want to lift a typical human 200lb male with medium armour and 10lbs equipment (240lbs) you’re gonna need 16 strength else your speed drops to 5lbs.

You’re not gonna be moving anything large or bigger at more than 5ft speed unless you’re strength is supernaturally high.

So are the tales of Monks (not usually a huge strength class) dragging folks with the grappler feat back and forth through spike growths not a load of houey?

 

[James Gasik]

This was touched upon before, I wish I could point to it, but if you think about this for a moment, you'll realize the rules for carrying and moving things are incompatible with grappling.

For example, you can only grapple someone up to one size category larger than you yourself. Consider that a Large-sized creature, say, an Ogre, weighs something like 600-1000 lbs. You'd need to have 20 Str to even attempt to move an ogre...except, wait, the rules say you can only move 5 ft. if you tried, and moving in a grapple is at half speed, so 2.5', lol.

The Ogre, by the by, has a 19 Str, and could not in any way move a grappled Huge creature (19 x 30 x 2 for large sized = 1,140 lbs.), they would simply be too massive.

The encumbrance rules are written for encumbrance, and the combat rules are written for combat. Attempting to apply them both simultaneously simply results in player characters being largely unable to do something the PHB tells them that they can.

I know some will argue this point (they did last time, too) but there would be no reason for player facing rules that only function in extraordinary situations (enlarged characters, maximum or magically boosted strength). You could have just as easily said "creatures cannot move creatures one size larger than they are".

 

[TheSword]

This was touched upon before, I wish I could point to it, but if you think about this for a moment, you'll realize the rules for carrying and moving things are incompatible with grappling.

For example, you can only grapple someone up to one size category larger than you yourself. Consider that a Large-sized creature, say, an Ogre, weighs something like 600-1000 lbs. You'd need to have 20 Str to even attempt to move an ogre...except, wait, the rules say you can only move 5 ft. if you tried, and moving in a grapple is at half speed, so 2.5', lol.

The Ogre, by the by, has a 19 Str, and could not in any way move a grappled Huge creature (19 x 30 x 2 for large sized = 1,140 lbs.), they would simply be too massive.

The encumbrance rules are written for encumbrance, and the combat rules are written for combat. Attempting to apply them both simultaneously simply results in player characters being largely unable to do something the PHB tells them that they can.

I know some will argue this point (they did last time, too) but there would be no reason for player facing rules that only function in extraordinary situations (enlarged characters, maximum or magically boosted strength). You could have just as easily said "creatures cannot move creatures one size larger than they are".

Surely the grappling rules are for restraining creatures and - if you are able to - drag them or carry them.

i have no idea why anyone medium sized would expect to be able to carry or drag an 800lb ogre (or relatively speaking an ogre to be able to carry a stone giant).

There are other ways of moving things - shove for instance to represent flipping someone heavier than you over.

 

[tetrasodium]

I feel like moving other creatures has been seriously nerfed in 2024 and I hadn’t noticed it. My party are pretty regularly heaving another PHB onto their shoulder and pulling the out of danger but in the 2024 rules this becomes much harder. I also don’t quite get how folks are talking about dragging people though spike growths etc.

Relevant rules

• Carrying capacity for medium creatures is now Strength x 15 (150 lbs for Str 10)
• You can push, lift or drag something Str x 30 but if it’s more than Str x 15 your move drops to 5ft

So basically if you want to lift a typical human 200lb male with medium armour and 10lbs equipment (240lbs) you’re gonna need 16 strength else your speed drops to 5lbs.

You’re not gonna be moving anything large or bigger at more than 5ft speed unless you’re strength is supernaturally high.

So are the tales of Monks (not usually a huge strength class) dragging folks with the grappler feat back and forth through spike growths not a load of houey?

I think that's the 2014 math too.

Needing 16 strength isn't that high given the characters typically lifting stuff. Beyond that is the fact that having linear∆ capacity linked to an almost implausible penalty and a character sheet they doesn't even pretend that it should be tracked leads to players flatly ignoring it entirely. The gm can't really stop the game and play the jeopardy theme while boblooks up weights and calculates them for the first time because they look like the jerk when it doesn't matter.

Also not every monster is adult male human size and not all of those have any meaningful level of "gear" . If you wanted to allow a low strength character to carry another PC with a ranger roll/firemans carry and attach the fact that doing so pretty much prevents doing much else without dumping Bob on the ground then go for it

∆in the past stronger characters got more carry per point and more importantly low strength characters has a pretty tight budget with just their gear. Low strength PCs used to track their limited capacity usage to enjoy the benefits of staying in light load while high strength PCs tracked it because they were carrying a bunch of extra bits n bobs for the party in light load or didn't benefits from being under medium load.

 

[TheSword]

I think that's the 2014 math too.

Needing 16 strength isn't that high given the characters typically lifting stuff. Beyond that is the fact that having linear∆ capacity linked to an almost implausible penalty and a character sheet they doesn't even pretend that it should be tracked leads to players flatly ignoring it entirely. The gm can't really stop the game and play the jeopardy theme while boblooks up weights and calculates them for the first time because they look like the jerk when it doesn't matter.

Also not every monster is adult male human size and not all of those have any meaningful level of "gear" . If you wanted to allow a low strength character to carry another PC with a ranger roll/firemans carry and attach the fact that doing so pretty much prevents doing much else without dumping Bob on the ground then go for it

∆in the past stronger characters got more carry per point and more importantly low strength characters has a pretty tight budget with just their gear. Low strength PCs used to track their limited capacity usage to enjoy the benefits of staying in light load while high strength PCs tracked it because they were carrying a bunch of extra bits n bobs for the party in light load or didn't benefits from being under medium load.

I guess it’s just the principle of the Str 10 monk not being able to lift the fully armoured knight and carry him up a ladder/flight of stairs/jump through the air.

I see it a lot with Fly spell being used to ferry people around when in fact that would likely be pretty slow unless the target is extremely strong.

 

[aco175]

The encumbrance rules are written for encumbrance, and the combat rules are written for combat. Attempting to apply them both simultaneously simply results in player characters being largely unable to do something the PHB tells them that they can.

I like this approach.

Never let carrying capacity get in the way of a good combat.

 

[TheSword]

This was touched upon before, I wish I could point to it, but if you think about this for a moment, you'll realize the rules for carrying and moving things are incompatible with grappling.

For example, you can only grapple someone up to one size category larger than you yourself. Consider that a Large-sized creature, say, an Ogre, weighs something like 600-1000 lbs. You'd need to have 20 Str to even attempt to move an ogre...except, wait, the rules say you can only move 5 ft. if you tried, and moving in a grapple is at half speed, so 2.5', lol.

The Ogre, by the by, has a 19 Str, and could not in any way move a grappled Huge creature (19 x 30 x 2 for large sized = 1,140 lbs.), they would simply be too massive.

The encumbrance rules are written for encumbrance, and the combat rules are written for combat. Attempting to apply them both simultaneously simply results in player characters being largely unable to do something the PHB tells them that they can.

I know some will argue this point (they did last time, too) but there would be no reason for player facing rules that only function in extraordinary situations (enlarged characters, maximum or magically boosted strength). You could have just as easily said "creatures cannot move creatures one size larger than they are".

Thank you! I found the old 2023 thread for 2014 D&D.
Seems like it was split 60/40

Justifications for allowing it seems to be running folks along (which doesn’t really make sense for dead weight or unconscious creatures, or creatures without legs for that matter).

Or it uses the argument that creatures don’t have weight so it dragging and carrying can’t apply. Which also doesn’t really make sense either we all we meet to know is a large creature will need to be shoved (or dragged at 5ft speed if very strong)

 

[TheSword]

I like this approach.

Never let carrying capacity get in the way of a good combat.

I don’t think Str 8 medium characters dragging ogres around by the leg does make for a good combat.

 

[aco175]

I don’t think Str 8 medium characters dragging ogres around by the leg does make for a good combat.

I would think it is how you look at it. Maybe you are not dragging them, but doing some Judo move like in movies where you use their momentum to guide them or some move where you have an arm-lock and force them with pain of breaking their arm.

Then again, there are no combat rules for this thinking either.

 

[TheSword]

I would think it is how you look at it. Maybe you are not dragging them, but doing some Judo move like in movies where you use their momentum to guide them or some move where you have an arm-lock and force them with pain of breaking their arm.

Then again, there are no combat rules for this thinking either.

Are there many judo movies where 10 year olds don’t to fully grown athletic adults? Not a push (5ft) I know kids can do that to adults - but a full momentum guiding?